We should have been building more nuclear. We’re not going to upgrade civilization with windmills and putting on sweaters. Think of how much power we’ll need for millions of robots?
Like:
Copper. "As the world shifts to wind energy and electric cars, demand for the conductive metal has increased. But mining copper brings its own environmental hazards"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/09/copper-minin...
Impacts of lithium mining on water stressed regions in Chile
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/01/c...
Impacts of rare earth refining in China.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/business/china-rare-earth...
silicon tetrachloride from solar production
https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=831
Europe should not outsource it's ecological impact to developing countries.
FYI, a typical 1GW nuclear plant produces 30 tons, or 10m3, of high-level waste. Germany uses ~500TWh of electricity per year. So Germany could replace all their electricity generation with 60 nuclear plants and would need to find space for 1800 tons or 5km3 of waste per year.
For comparison, German landfills can accommodate 70M metric tons per year.
France, a country famous for its investment into nuclear, is not covered in nuclear waste, and does not seem to have any issue disposing of it safely.
Nuclear has its disadvantages, but painting the many people who advocate for it on HN as delusional or ignorant is not very respectful.
Silicon tetrachloride used for silicon production is toxic and has to handled carefully.
The main point is that, if Europe wants to invest more in solar power, it should also do the manufacturing in Europe and waste disposal in Europe.
For example, nuclear power is often sold as a plant that just sits there churning out zero-emissions power for 50 years from a few tons of super energy dense fuel (such as from the above commenter). Without acknowledging that fuel needs to be enriched from intensive and environmentally destructive mining of raw uranium ore. Which comes with risks to workers and possible contamination of groundwater to nearby communities, etc. Or the carbon impacts of the massive amounts of concrete/steel/etc that are required to build the plant, or the opportunity costs of spending tens of billions on a plant that will require continuing to burn natural gas and coal for another 10-20+ years until it comes online as a replacement, etc.
Otherwise it's just special pleading to apply a different standard that exaggerates the negative externalities of solar + batteries.
Carter administration - Fast reactors and nuclear nonproliferation problem
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245230381...
The biggest CO2 impact of nuclear energy is from the steel/concrete used to build the containment building. Because of the aircraft impact rules, nuclear containment building has to survive the impact of a fully loaded large aircraft. These buildings are the strongest non-military facilities in existence, no other civilian industrial plants (even chemical plants with very nasty stuff) have this level of protection. Personally, I think much steel/concrete could be saved by moving nuclear reactor deep underground, but this would require changes in regulation. Again, deep underground nuclear facilities, geopolitical questions...
Your objection appeals to emotions, not to reason. The very kind of objection that has enabled fossil fuels to be seen as less dangerous. FYI, nuclear energy has killed single digits of people. Fossil fuels kill around 10M annually through pollution alone.
Granted, your lament aims to make people privilege clean energy over nuclear, but in nature it is still the kind of thought-terminating fearmongering that gets us surveillance to protect children, so I object on principle.
Further, as a proponent of nuclear power, you should be aware of the eforts that have gone into preventing deaths from the multiple nuclear plant accidents that have taken place. This is in part because of an awareness that a single major accident would kill support for nuclear power globally. The more plants exist, the higher the probability of this. It is therefore in the best interests of nuclear power proponents to limit its share and to replace the majority of fossil fuel power with clean renewables.
Comparisons should be made for replacements.
> plus the wind generators are ruining every single landscape we have.
And not if plants can't get cooling water because of drought.
https://www.euronews.com/2026/06/25/france-takes-nuclear-rea...
And bad weather usually goes along with with significantly increased power generation from wind turbines. Together with battery storage getting cheaper and cheaper, a long term bet on nuclear seems bad both for economic and ecological reasons.
Move fast and break things this is not.
Even in terms of radiation accidents, nuclear power generation pales in comparison to orphan sources from medical equipment. Yet you don't see people clamoring on about fewer x-ray or radiological machines.
> made large swaths of land uninhabitable for ~forever.
Are you talking about places besides the Chernobyl exclusion zone?
And why compare the small amount of area made dangerous by nuclear accidents to the entire planet being destroyed by fossil fuels?
Worst catastrophes? Pick any industrial accident with more than like 10 people killed and you've got nuclear beat. A single plane falls from the sky and you've outdone nuclear.
Large swaths of land? You mean a tiny part of Ukraine?
Keep breathing in the radioactive coal fumes in the air, those are good for you, actually.
Chernobyl was a disaster caused by Soviet incompetence combined with an RBMK reactor design that literally had no proper containment structure. That's the worst case that has ever occurred, nothing like it has happened since, and it can't really happen again with any reactor built with a real containment vessel, which is standard everywhere outside the old Soviet bloc. Three Mile Island is the perfect example, a partial meltdown caused by a mix of mechanical failure and operator error back in 1979, and the containment held. Zero deaths, zero meaningful radiation release. Even with human screwups and old tech, the actual design of the reactor kept it from becoming a Chernobyl.
And even taking Chernobyl as the worst case scenario we've ever seen, the exclusion zone covers about 2500 km^2 of land area, which isn't small, but it's not "large swathes of land" either. You get irradiated from flying in airplanes more than walking around most of the exclusion zone these days, obviously other than around Pripyat itself. Hell, you can take a walking tour through the zone, I'd very much recommend it (after the war concludes :p)
Meanwhile the reality right now is that fossil fuel sources are polluting the entire planet actively. Coal plants release more radioactive material into the environment through fly ash than nuclear plants do under normal operation. Coal is far from clean in terms of radioactivity on top of everything else it's doing, and it's actively making the world uninhabitable at a much larger and faster scale than nuclear ever has, but yet we're holding nuclear to some higher standard due to years of propaganda.
It's not a perfect technology obviously, but it sure as hell is better than basically all fossil fuel sources.